Find out why Patch 5.4 is the best yet.

It’s been more than two weeks since World of Warcraft’s latest patch went live, and I have to say that, for me, Siege of Orgrimmar is the best content patch of the expansion so far.

Not only is Siege of Orgrimmar an engaging raid instance, bringing the story of Mists of Pandaria to an awesome climax, but the new Flexi raid difficulty is genius. Easier than Normal but harder than LFR, Flexi raiding allows a pre-made group of up to 24 players to raid the final tier of this expansion in an environment that scales.

My 10-man raiding guild has already taken advantage of this new raid difficulty to not only progress through content faster than we normally would, but also to take all guildies we have online at raid start. Players that previously would have missed out due to unexpected, last minute commitments are now able to log online, say, an hour late, and join the raid group. More importantly, nobody goes on standby!

Our experience so far has been fantastic; some unsubscribed players have returned and guild morale is rising once more.

The icing on the cake comes with the introduction of the Timeless Isle, which prompted some of us to level long-neglected alts. Within an hour of hitting level 90 my Burning Crusade Warrior was raiding, thanks to the copious quantities of epic items obtained on the Isle of Fun.

This and so much more leads to a great big thumbs-up from me, but how about you? What’s your favorite part of Patch 5.4? Did Siege of Orgrimmar bring you back to WoW?

Comments

I am sure flex is a great addition for those guilds like the OP describes(and the one I am in) but it seems to be really hurting LFR. Which would be fine, if they would get rid of LFR and make some content for all the people who do it. As it stands though LFR is the only real character progression in the game for these people. Well unless you include timeless isle, in which case they are done in about an hour.

I took 2 characters through both wings of LFR during those 7 days. Queues were ridiculously long, 1 hour+ to get in and often more time waiting once inside on people bailing from wiping. I don't know if it is because flex has taken a lot of the quality players out of LFR, but wiping is extremely common. Both of my chars killed Nagrim with 4 stacks of determination, and from talking to people that is apparently pretty good and many people report seeing as many as 8. Now apparently the whole purpose behind determination is to get people to stay. It didn't seem to be working, having to stop to replace tanks and healers happened several times on both chars I ran. Since there are 4 bosses in first 2 wings, the amount of time it takes to do a full clear is well past the amount of time I can usually play in one sitting. However, because it seems fairly hard to get a fresh run unless you have already killed the last boss it worked out. The down side to that is you spend at least 2 hours in queue to finish one wing.

Timeless isle was fun on my first char for like the first 2 hours. The way drop rates seem to work is that it appears to go down drastically after your first 10 or so gear drops. So after a bit it seems all you get is coins from anything. Rares were a mixed bag some days it was fairly easy to find stuff to kill other days nothing. Once I knew my way around doing it on another char took about an hour to get every chest on the isle. After running 3 chars around the isle I had geared out 6 alts to 480+ item level. As it stand the isle is only exciting for a very short time on each char, I think it would have been more fun if you got fewer drops that were only of the kind your char could use, but the drop rate didn't drop off drastically. That way the content would last longer and you would actually have to play your alts to get gear for them, which IMHO is the point of having alts.(being able to toss an alt a couple pieces of nice gear is cool, tossing an alt almost a complete set not so much)

Proving grounds was fun for a bit. It is great for trying out new specs, and a great replacement for combat dummies that you basically have access to anywhere. However I don't really feel the draw to spend much time in there unless I am trying something out. In a game where time is money, time sinks with no rewards aren't very appealing to me.

Overall I think the game has put far too much focus on raiding at the expense of everything else. LFR was a painful experience and one that I think many people will move away from. Some will go to flex others will just stop. With not much satisfying content to do, I believe many of those that stop will end up getting burned out on the repetitive non-raid content and finally canceling. After 7 days, I got most of my alts geared and 2 chars through the new LFR content, leaving me wondering why I should sub. There isn't much left to hold my interest at this point. It will be a while before all of SoO is out for LFR, and even when it is, it scares me to think of what those LFR groups will be like with the harder bosses.

Flex raiding is a good idea. However, there is no way to kick disruptive players short of reforming the entire raid! Yes, there is a kick function, but it is BROKEN! Until that is fixed, I won't touch Flex raiding with a 39 1/2 foot pole - and I suggest you don't either.

Completely....agree......100%. I absolutely love it, and love the fact I can now have a bit more of a learning experience in raiding that I didn't think I'd get to experience. I think Blizz have got the diffuculty balance right when it comes to jumping from LFR up to Flexi. When I did the Vale of Eternal Sorrows flexi, I was at first worried about the difficulty. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Yes there were a couple of wipes. But-and for me it's a big but-I felt I accomplished more by helping down the bosses and I felt finally, I earned the gear (well except the belt due to a silly mistake resulting in me copping it lol). Yes it's not normal level raiding which I have done before (though I admit I haven't done any Cata raids only WoTLK before this). I absolutely hated the fact that if I made a stupid mistake in LFR, I still got loot which I didn't deserve. And the difficulty scaling idea is a great thing to have aswell so GJ Blizz. And I also like the fact you can wait to enter scenarios and LFR at the same time aswell.

However I'd wish they could sort out the PvP problem. It get's annoying when you do damage, then you hit roiling blood then it spreads, then you get some PvPer knocking seven bells out of you. And half the time it's an arrogant douche. I hate PvP, I never PvP and I never will, so I'd like that sorted out. Especially when it's not a PvP realm and it's PvE.

Apart from that though it's a spot on job by Blizz

P.S. Though I didn't enjoy the Proving Grounds. For me that was the only blemish.

I really dont like LFR but I can't commit time to Normals. Flex works perfectly as it allows me to play with my friends.. on a very flexible schedule. It's great!

Timeless Isle is great because This allows me to gear up and be LFR/Flex ready in the first week of the wings opening up! This is very different from 5.3 where it still took a long time to get geared up to 480 (the required level for the first wing of ToT LFR).